Seasons greetings John

John Reid on Sunday sparked another bout of one of the most stupid new traditions that we’ve imported from the US. That’s moral outrage at the “war on Christmas”.

Making headlines in the Sun, Telegraph, Times, Guardian and anyone else who’ll listen, he said: “Like the vast majority of people, I’m sick and tired of this sort of mad political correctness that said you can’t wear a crucifix on British Airways, or you can’t put up decorations for Christmas, or you can’t call Christmas ‘Christmas’.

Today it turns out that Reid’s Christmas cards don’t have a single mention of the word Christmas, saying instead “Season’s greetings”.

Good work John. Repeat ten times, people who shout about ridiculous issues, end up looking ridiculous. Christmas is not going to disappear, and if it’s loosing its meaning, then that’s more to do with rampant consumerism that “political correctness”.

As a lesson to us all, here is the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart responding to right-wing TV presenter Bill O’Reily, who orchestrated last year’s campaign in the US against the “war against Christmas”

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5 Responses to Seasons greetings John

Does Reid seriously believe that by repeating Daily Mail editorial it will neutralise right-wing arguments? Surely it will only increase their legitimacy and people will feel increasingly keen to vote for the Real McCoy – the Tories and the BNP. There’s something a bit creepy about Straw and Reid’s interventions on multicultural issues over the last 12 months.

I grew up in the Socialist Republic of Haringey in the 1980s and I can inform readers that, back then, the ‘war on Christmas’ – which I think was a proxy war on intelligent thought in general – was a very real thing.

My infants school refused to allow any mention of the religious aspects of Christmas – we had Santa, Rudolph and tinsel but no mention Jesus. We didn’t sing Christmas carols that mention God or Jesus or Mary.

We did celebrate Diwali and received an explanation – albeit a fairly crude one, I imagine – of its religious significance.

I don’t know whether the school claimed this policy was designed to appease Muslims and Hindus – it obviously wasn’t, it was designed to appease bourgeois trotskyist teachers – but even as a seven year old I found it insulting, not to my culture but to my intelligence.

One of things I liked most about the dawn of New Labour was that it became acceptable to be on the left and not take these kinds of ludicrous cultural positions.

That said, I agree on Reid, Straw and the right-wing hand-wringers, though. It was a story once but it’s a very old story and there no evidence that this sort of stuff is getting worse.

Reid was simply jumping on the band-wagon, most likely in a desperate attempt to get some publicity (though he no doubt relished the chance to indulge in one of New Labour’s most popular past-times: bashing largely non-existent “PC liberals”).

The more he does things like this the better Gordon Brown looks as the next leader of the Labour Party.